AECBytes Subscriber List Crosses 2000 Mark

AECbytes recorded another milestone towards the end of February when its subscriber list crossed the 2000 mark. This comes within 15 months of the launch of the publication in November 2003.

Special thanks to all the subscribers for making this happen. This publication continues to gain in momentum with your support.

All AECbytes subscribers are strictly opt-in only, and signed themselves up using the form on the Subscribe page. For those who haven't subscribed yet, please do so. This publication is committed to bringing you quality content, critical reviews of products, analyses of trends and events, and insightful case studies of AEC firms and building projects.

This month, AECbytes reviews the next release of AutoCAD, still the most widely used application in the AEC industry. AutoCAD 2006 will be released on March 22, and boasts of several enhancements and new features along various fronts, all geared towards revitalizing the application and improving ease of use and efficiency. These include a new dynamic input functionality that makes the command line optional for the first time in the application's 20 year old history; dynamic blocks that allow multiple symbol representations within the same block, dramatically reducing the number of block libraries needed; direct extraction of attribute data into tables in which simple math calculations can be done, and several other improvements in annotation, hatching, interface, element creation and modification, and customization. All these substantial and undeniably useful improvements; in fact, most of them seem so obviously necessary that you can only wonder why the application didn't have them before and how you were able to function without them.

Look out also for a Viewpoint by Pat Douglas, Adjunct Professor of CAD at Bay Path College, who reflects on technology penetration in the AEC industry in light of her extensive IT experience in the industries of insurance, manufacturing and technology.

Thank you
Lachmi Khemlani

Editorials > March 2005